John Podesta apologizes for Jonestown quote

Speaker John Boehner’s office ripped John Podesta, the incoming counselor to President Barack Obama, for comments he made to POLITICO, comparing House Republicans to followers of Jim Jones, who murdered five people, including then-Rep. Leo Ryan, before committing mass suicide in Guyana in 1978.

“For those who’ve forgotten, a Democratic member of Congress was murdered in Jonestown and a current one, Rep. Jackie Speier, was shot five times during the same incident,” Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement to reporters. “If this is the attitude of the new White House, it’s hard to see how the president gets anything done again.”

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Podesta, speaking to POLITICO Magazine’s Glenn Thrush earlier this year and quoted in an article that posted Tuesday evening, recommended that the president and his aides should “focus on executive action, given that they are facing a second term against a cult worthy of Jonestown in charge of one of the houses of Congress.”